It’s that time of the year again, when Gomez, Mirabeau, and I are whisked away to an undisclosed location to have “work done.” So, we do a little housecleaning and bring you some snippets of topics that didn’t make it into full-fledged blog posts (but may someday). See you in September!
It is always necessary to remember the conditions in which the music of the past was heard, and the extent to which those conditions have altered in the present day.
The borders of beauty are continually enlarging themselves, including things that were formerly “beyond the pale.”
“The immediate reactions of the audience to new works are very often thoroughly wrong; its reaction in the longer term is always right.”
“Crucial to remember: The majority of human emotions exist not in man but between men.”
“It is an error to believe that criticism exists in order to be right. It exists in order to discuss.”
“All true authentic art is simple and bears restraint within itself.”
“The ultimate end of all art is still its practical performance; the meaning of music still lies in playing.”
_Furtwängler
Visual/Music correspondences:
Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”
Liszt’s “Sposalizio”
Speaking of “colors” when referring to music.
Painter Whistler calling his pictures “Symphonies” and “Nocturnes”
Delacroix had a theory called “musicality” that required the subject of a painting to be “so far away that neither subject nor lines can be made out.”
Debussy’s “arabesque” quality.
Baudelaire’s “Correspondences” among sound, color, scent (synesthesia)
Seurat: “Art is harmony.”
© 2011 by Frank Daykin, for Innovative Music Programs
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